Sarsfield saga links Bassedas with former mayor of Durham

Bassedas, who still sounds like he should be a bath oil, came to Tyneside from Velez Sarsfield. It prompted Backtrack reader Norman Coleby to recall a conversation around 1950 with Arthur Sarsfield - Norman's brother - when Arthur worked for Shell-Mex on Teesside.

Another relative, as Norman remembered it, had gone to South America and started a football team in the hope of popularising the game - and so it proves, though the family tree spreads rather more globally than we could have imagined.

E-mails to the club have gone unacknowledged, its website is in Spanish, its history "under construction". Finally, however, we were put in touch with Norman Sarsfield himself - now 80, almost blind, but in evidently good form.

"As long as you don't want my fingerprints I'll help in any way I can," he said.

Three Sarsfields, brothers, had landed in Bristol from Ireland around 1810. One joined the British army and was a lance sergeant at Waterloo - Norman still has his discharge papers, remarks how little the document has changed over almost 200 years. That's his side of the family.

Another went to Madeira and became a wine merchant. A descendant is now chief engineer of the Portuguese telephone service.

A third brother - adventurous lads, these Sarsfields - sailed for Argentina, become the country's principal law giver and was instrumental in independence from Spain.

In 1872, just six years after England's first football club was officially formed, Dominic Sarsfield - a son or grandson - founded the club that still bears the family name.

"I don't know where he got his football knowledge from, but they must certainly have been pioneers," says Norman. "I would think they were pretty wealthy, too."

The family came across the football club when Scotland played Argentina in the World Cup - Velez Sarsfield, apparently, are rated Argentina's second club after River Plate.

"If they're selling players to Newcastle for £3.5m they must have come an awfully long way," says Norman.

"They're like Arsenal to Manchester United, or maybe that should be Manchester United to Arsenal." We told him the latter was the case.

Norman, a former Eighth Army major, is another Sarsfield who was thrown into the deep end and discovered that he could swim.

Coach, administrator, author and himself Durham's champion swimmer for 16 years, he was a judge at the 1948 Olympics, managed the 1968 Olympic team, became the ASA's first full-time secretary and for 20 years was also secretary of the European Swimming Federation.

Until last year, when his eyesight deteriorated, he was chairman of the Commonwealth Games Council for England, overseeing the 2002 games in Manchester.

Durham's mayor in 1963-64 - and, perhaps inevitably, chairman of the swimming baths committee - he also helped organise the Northern Echo sponsored five-mile races in the Tees from Stockton to Middlesbrough.

"They ended in 1948 because of the pollution," he recalls. "We took the race to Durham but, pollution or nor, it was never quite the same."

He moved to Loughborough on gaining the ASA post in the 1970s, has been awarded an honorary doctorate at Loughborough University, still swims twice a week - "just half a mile and out again."

Though he now uses a white stick, friends report that at his 80th birthday party he was in fine form - "singing and dancing like a man half his age."

He is unlikely, of course, to meet Christian Bassedas to compare notes. "But if he's one of Sarsfields," says Norman, "he's come from exceptional stock."

A late-ish fixture change, Tow Law played Durham City on Saturday in the Durham Challenge Cup. Afterwards in the clubhouse, Lawyers' supporter and resident Scouse Bill McNiven fell into conversation with City manager Brian Honour, the former Hartlepool hero.

"So you're the manager of West Auckland?" said Bill.

"Eh?" said Brian.

Tow Law had been due to play West Auckland in the league, but the several times postponed cup game took procedural precedence. "It's West Auckland in this morning's Daily Telegraph," protested Bill, having spent the previous 90 minutes under a mammoth misapprehension.

Memo to Mr McNiven: buy The Northern Echo instead.

Jeff Brown, one of the faces of Tyne Tees Television sport, has been confessing to a little known love: he's a speedway man.

"Once the smell of burning oil gets in your nostrils that's it," says Jeff. "I try to get it on television as much as I can, but I get a bit of stick at work.

"Admittedly it can be a bit processional, first one out of the starting gate wins, but there was a time in the 1970s when speedway was bigger to me than football."

His team was the Sunderland Stars, later the Gladiators, who in four seasons at Boldon dog track failed to set even engine oil alight but proved great entertainers, nonetheless.

They included Jack Millen, a Maori who lived in a caravan, walked round Sunderland barefoot ("not advisable" Jeff concedes) and ate fish and chips so long as the fish was raw.

Mad Jack, they affectionately called him, or sometimes just Millen the Villain.

Jack Millen died tragically in a car crash. Others from the roaring seventies - like Gentleman George Barclay, Dave Gatenby, Brian Havelock and Pete Wrathall - will be lapping it up again at a reunion on Thursday in the Quality Hotel, Boldon. Jeff's the compere, and can smell it already.

The team, he admits, weren't the finest septet on shale. In truth they'd gone the entire four years without an away league win until their last ever match, at Weymouth. The Gladiators fought back from a record 11 points deficit to win 39-38.

That and many other stories will go round again on Thursday evening. Tickets - including buffet, band and disco - are £7.50 from Bob Ferry on 0181-536-5064.

In the informal way they have in the Over 40s League, a little lad's kicking round the Marden dressing room before Saturday's match.

"It's my birthday," he announces. "I'm six."

Kind-hearted Marden secretary John Weir organises a whip round, collects over £5 and gives it to the bairn's father - a player from Steels Social Club in Sunderland, the opposition.

Dad's a bit taken aback - "it's not his birthday at all," he says, but is even more alarmed when next he puts his head round the door.

"It's just got worse," he says, "the little bugger's invited eight of his mates to the party."

Fabulous footballer, Len Shackleton could write a bit, too. A letter to The Times from the former chief sports sub-editor of The People recalls Shack's vivid description of a Newcastle United attack...."He went past the defence like a magician - and then shot like Tommy Cooper."

THE only club to have won both the FA Cup and the FA Amateur Cup (Backtrack, December 1) is, of course, Wimbledon.

Brian Shaw from Shildon today seeks the identity of the only footballer to have been on the losing side in an FA Cup final at Wembley for three different clubs.

We're back, win or lose, on Friday